WASHINGTON -- It's not just man's closer primate relatives that exhibit
brain power. Dolphins, dogs and elephants are teaching us a few lessons,
too.

Dolphin brains involve completely different wiring from primates,
especially in the neocortex, which is central to higher functions such as
reasoning and conscious thought.

Dolphins are so distantly related to humans that it's been 95 million
years since we had even a remotely common ancestor. Yet when it comes to
intelligence, social behavior and communications, some researchers say
dolphins come as close to humans as our ape and monkey cousins.

Maybe closer.

'They understand concepts like zero, abstract concepts. They do
everything that chimpanzees do and bonobos can do,' said Lori Marino, a
neuroscientist at Emory University who specializes in dolphin research. 'The
fact is that they are so different from us and so much like us at the same
time.'

In recent years, animal researchers have found that thought processes in
critters aren't a matter of how closely related they are to humans. You
don't have to be a primate to be smart.

Dolphin brains look nothing like human brains, Marino said. Yet, she
says, 'the more you learn about them, the more you realize that they do have
the capacity and characteristics that we think of when we think of a
person.'

These mammals recognize themselves in the mirror and have a sense of
social identity. They not only know who they are, but they also have a sense
of who, where and what their groups are. They interact and comprehend the
health and feelings of other dolphins so fast it as if they are online with
each other, Marino said.

Animal intelligence 'is not a linear thing,' said Duke University
researcher Brian Hare, who studies bonobos, which are one of man's closest
relatives, and dogs, which are not.

'Think of it like a toolbox,' he said. 'Some species have an amazing
hammer. Some species have an amazing screwdriver.'

For dogs, a primary tool is their obsessive observation of humans and
ability to understand human communication, Hare said. For example, dogs
follow human pointing so well that they understand it whether it's done with
a hand or a foot; chimps don't, said Hare, whose upcoming book is called
'The Genius of Dogs.'

Then there are elephants.

They empathize, they help each other, they work together. In a classic
cooperation game, in which animals only get food if two animals pull
opposite ends of a rope at the same time, elephants learned to do that much
quicker than chimps, said researcher Josh Plotnik, head of elephant research
at the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation in Thailand.

They do even better than monkeys at empathy and rescue, said Plotnik. In
the wild, he has seen elephants stop and work together to rescue another
elephant that fell in a pit.

'There is something in the environment, in the evolution of this species
that is unique,' he says.